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"Kata--um, Meg."
Yada felt her whole body heat up. Even though they'd finally put their relationship out there a short while ago, she still struggled to choke out Kataoka's name. It was just, well...she'd spent so long wordlessly admiring their class rep and only gushing about her to Kurahashi that it hardly even seemed real to her.
Like, wow. Yada and Kataoka. Touka and Meg. Dating.
It was a concept Yada had fantasized about time and time again, yet now that reality was here with her she felt ready to snap like a twig under the weight of it. Kataoka was hers, hers to run up to and throw her arms around, kiss her silly until they collapsed into the grass and run hands through each other's hair despite the sticky sweat and spit dribbling where their tongues missed.
"Touka! What do you need?" Kataoka turned around with a soft smile, so warm and loving that Touka knew, for real, that this smile was hers and only hers.
"Well...I was thinking." Deep breaths, now. We're dating. This is a Perfectly Normal Thing that couples who are dating do. "Valentine's Day is coming up, and I know Maehara's got an assassination of some sort planned for the day before, so. Y'see. After that, though, on the actual day, I thought that after school would be a nice time to well, I dunno. Go out for a little meal together?"
Kataoka raised her eyebrows in genuine surprise. "Are you...asking me out?"
Nod.
Yada bit her lip in anticipation, because wow this really shouldn't have been so surprising to the both of them but barely a month into their relationship and they'd never been on a proper date...
Then her girlfriend started giggling. "Oh, Touka. I thought you'd never ask! It's been so long since we made it official that, well, I guess I never put much thought into it after hesitating on it so much. Maybe I just figured that you were comfortable with keeping it real slow?"
"Th-that doesn't matter. What's important is that we're going out on Valentine's, right?" Yada's eyes shone like twin stars, eager and so very ready to jump regardless of the answer.
"Of course!" Another warm smile. Yada could really get used to these just-for-me girlfriend perks. "Where will we be going, though?"
Ah.
"Touka, you know when you asked me out to dinner, I expected, well. Fancy."
"Just go with it, will you? I spent so long trying to make this romantic and everything."
Situated on the swell of a hill, right below a tree whose buds had just begun to emerge, the two girlfriends sat against each other in a display of starkly clashing fashion sense. Yada had shown up at their meeting place in a rather pleasant display - pretty white blouse and shorts that drew attention to her subtle curves - but she was horrifically underwhelming in the face of all the sheer effort Kataoka had put into looking nice. Hair curled (artificially, of course, but it was still breathtaking), lips glossed, and dressed up real smart in a collared dress shirt with her sleeves rolled to the elbows - Kataoka wasn't just pretty, or nice - she was beautiful. Yada could have stood there forever, entranced in the new heights of her girlfriend's attractiveness, had Kataoka not shyly pointed out the contrast in their styles of dress.
Which lead to them presently seated on Yada's picnic blanket under the budding tree, chilly wind stirring up around Yada's homemade picnic.
"Your cooking is so good, Touka. I can't believe I got so lucky with you," Kataoka teased, leaning onto her girlfriend's shoulder with her eyes lidded as she took her time with Yada's stir-fry.
Yada sighed. "When you've got a terminally ill younger brother and a mother in between jobs...cooking is pretty much the least you can do to keep your family afloat."
They were silent for a good while after that.
"Oh...I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like--"
"It's fine, really!" Yada insisted, turning back to Kataoka. "One day, I'll graduate from a good college and find myself a well-paying job so I can cover my brother's medical bills no problem, and when that's all said and done I can focus on really taking care of him. And I hope that, um. That you'll be there with me. In my future."
Kataoka did not pause to remind Yada how unlikely it was that their brief middle school relationship could possibly carry on into the future. She did not question her girlfriend's thinking at all.
No, in that moment, all she did was realize how much she really, inexplicably loved Yada Touka.
"Touka. Look at me for a moment."
Violet met olive, and the tension that built within that split second was enough to make Kataoka's heart ache.
"I'll be with you forever. I love you, Touka."
This was not something Yada was well-equipped to reply to. Certainly, she'd anticipated this happening one day, but now that it was happening in real time she was falling back into her detachment from all of reality as the weight sank in. She didn't know how to respond, because she loved Kataoka and Kataoka loved her and everything was so confusing...
They were assassins. They'd been brought together, as a class, by some horrible misfortune and then again by Korosensei's unexplainable arrival. And now? Now they were expected to move on with their lives, to leave behind a year of killing and befriending and falling in love.
And Yada loved Kataoka and she never, ever wanted to leave something so wonderful - someone so wonderful - in her past.
So when she breathed "I love you too, Meg," she meant it with every fiber of her soul, and when she leaned forward into the unavoidable kiss that followed, she poured every ounce of that meaning into the soft rhythm of their kiss, pushing and stroking Meg's iron-curled hair and thinking I love you, I love you, I love you.
Under the moon that Valentine's Day, Kataoka and Yada fell in love all over again, pulsing in the sweet taste of sesame oil-tinged lips and wrapped around each other, clashing outfits and all.
...
"Touka, you licked my chin again."
"Well, life just isn't fair sometimes, is it?"
But they were still middle schoolers. Babies, essentially. And babies decided that the best way to deal with anything and everything was to whine.
Or in this case, make an accidentally lewd noise into their smeared-lip-gloss-and-stir-fry kiss.
"You're gross, Meg."
"You're beautiful."